Industry news & advice blog

Sebastian Mysko is the Managing Director of Rising Digital, a social media and word of mouth marketing consultancy for the music industry. He tells us what it's all about...

What happens on a typical day in the Rising Digital office?
Ha, that's a good one. I'd say the only thing that remains a constant is the tea/coffee rounds and the girls chatting about food. That’s standard though right? In all seriousness, everyday will be filled with music, social media and communications. Yes, every day is different, with new challenges and fresh developments.

What type of marketing/PR do you do?
I guess, in my eyes, we offer an all-encompassing marketing solution; everything from PR strategy to e-marketing, design work, web 2.0 campaigns etc. But to the outside world, we're seen as social media and word of mouth marketing consultants. Whilst we do offer pretty much anything in the marketing mix, our focus is massively based on using new and multi-media within a strategic capacity. On the word-of-mouth marketing front, we engage with what we term 'key influencers' on something of a daily basis to ensure our clients' music is being appreciated and talked about around the globe, regardless of geographical territories and language barriers. But, and this is a huge deal to me, everything we do is ethically sound and 100% transparent. We're realists and never ever tell clients what they want to hear, rather than what they should be hearing.

What clients do you currently work with?
Our main clients are the Three Six Zero Group, CMO Management and ie:dance. In terms of the actual artists... here goes....

On the more mainstream front we're working with the Gorillaz team, Ms Dynamite, BBC Radio 1 ‘In New DJs We Trust’ Alex Metric and the Swedish House Mafia. On the electronic side we're working with Axwell, Sander van Doorn, Steve Angello, Sebastian Ingrosso, Dirty South, Mark Knight, Chris Lake, Michael Woods, Mauro Picotto and Simon Patterson.

Apologies for listing all of them, but I never like mentioning one without the others in these situations. They’re all amazing producers in their own genre…

We've also recently set up Rising Lite, headed up by our senior account manager, Beth Jones. The idea being to work with young and upcoming artists who are signed to smaller labels, and have more time on their hands to work their own campaigns - they just need some real advice about marketing strategy and probably some help with multimedia assets - podcasting etc. On that roster, we've got three awesome clients: NYC based Jimmy Vallance, London based tech-house label ‘Lower East’ and dubstep act 'Digital Farm Animals' who’ve been flying up Hype Machine charts with the latest single 'Home'. We've also worked with the singer songwriter Nastala, and have just come to the end of our campaign with Human Life - some of the most blissful electronic pop we've heard in quite some time.

All in all, I think it's fair to say we're very happy with what we’ve achieved client wise, in the last eighteen months.
 
Any example campaigns you're especially proud of?
The thing with this industry is it allows you test the boundaries. There is nowhere near the same restrictions and policies as there is in the corporate world. Every label and artist is trying to do something that little bit more creative and cool, so it's kind of a marketing free-for-all.

Don't get me wrong, there are still some crazy approval processes when you're working with the major labels, but that's fair enough. So, for us, there's literally a new idea being approved and rolled out every week. The first major campaign was for Sander van Doorn and his DJ Mag Top 100 placing - the client was keen on entering into the top ten... it was a freakin hard four months, but as a group team with various other third party agencies, we made it happen.

On the word of mouth front, I'll never for as long as I live forget the pleasure we took in seeing a YouTube video we distributed virally through our contacts hit 60,000 clicks over one weekend. More recently, through Facebook and Twitter alone, we managed to get a certain single to No.1 on the Beatport charts in less than five hours.

And there's the Gorillaz. From the minute we were asked to meet the team at EMI right through to present day, I've loved every single second of this journey - and we're only social media consultants on this one, so we're at the front of every piece of news, literally as it happens. Love it.

Have there been any marketing campaigns (not by Rising Digital) that you wish you were able to get involved in?
As arrogant as it may sound...not really. I sometimes see campaigns that are running using really clever web design assets, like when Moby embedded a Soundcloud player on something of a Twitter wall with an auto-hashtag functionality. Essentially, you listen to his album, download a free track and then tweet your comment at the end. May sound a little done now, but this was 2 years ago. I thought it was mega!

These days we're working on building our own in house web development team who are literally, as I type this, working on new concepts to help promote our artists. Having said that…did you see the Pendulum Facebook app? That’s a stroke of genius!

Any tips for unsigned acts?
Be unique in your style, persistent in your drive for ambition, but also, seek out real and truthful opinions on your productions. If you're not in that top percentile, it might be worth considering a different option in the industry. We get literally thousands of demos sent to us every week. I'd say we get maybe one track a month that one of the smaller labels we work with might listen to. Now that all you need is a computer and some software, it's totally saturated and I fear so much good music is getting lost amongst the dirge. But if you are genuinely awesome, get your online profile sorted; not just MySpace, but get a Facebook fan page up, Twitter, iLike, Last.FM, Soundcloud, YouTube, and so on. Trust me, it all plays a massive part. Once these places are set up, populate them and talk to other peers. It's all about two-way engagement, don't just sell, sell, sell. Once your productions are sounding great and your profile is sweet, you'll be a far more attractive option to those labels, and management consultancies.

Finally, a bad ego will get you sweet FA. Don't think you're above it, or be lazy with your attitude. Get after it and make it happen, otherwise you might never get out of the basement...